


The Adventure of the Traveling Police Box

by oursolemnhour49



Category: Doctor Who, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, maybe John (we'll see what happens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 01:55:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oursolemnhour49/pseuds/oursolemnhour49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes is biding his time while pretending to be dead, and a surge of deaths and disappearances in the homeless network has his full attention- until a pushy woman with red hair spots him in the street and demands that she help him look for a missing medical practitioner in a traveling blue box. HIATUS/POSSIBLY ABANDONED</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Adventure of the Traveling Police Box

He had thought the early morning hour would guarantee him a discreet return to his apartment, but commuters had begun to fill the streets by the time Sherlock Holmes emerged from the river walkways and into London proper. This was worrying, but as long as he walked quickly, there would be no cause for trouble. The publicity his death had received had been surprising, but it was unsurprising that Mycroft would go overboard with his tabloid contacts. His older brother had always enjoyed being able to pull strings. 

While that had made basic movement riskier than it should have been, on the whole people had remained unobservant. But they might see enough to think, “Oh, he looks like that bloke who leapt off the building the other day.” And while such witnesses would never entertain the possibility that he was the disgraced consulting detective, they might talk. Such talk never failed to find its way to the wrong ears. 

The corner coffee shop marked the beginning of his street, and already it was packed with early-morning commuters. Inside a stocky red-haired woman with sharp eyes and features turned sharply and followed his progress as he walked. Sherlock gave her a curt nod and continued on his way. 

This woman, for instance, had been in the vicinity for the past few days on his returns from his investigations, which was puzzling and slightly worrying. Her business suit was a good cut, but it was old and ill-fitting, and in any case there were very few businesses, unless he counted the new weight loss corporation that had opened a few streets north. From her worn clothes and shoes, she did not have much money to spare, and from the car keys that had been by the handbag on her table, she had had to drive. Yet there had also been a bus ticket in the book she had been reading, which meant on other days she had to use public transport. So she shared the car. Perhaps she was looking for a job, or commuted with a neighbor, or something of the kind. 

He paused abruptly in front of a homeless man that was sitting on an old crate by the road. The old man gave him a smile displaying rotten teeth. “Hey- spare something for a vet, would you?” Sherlock dug in his coat, turning as he did so. As he had expected, the woman was following him. 

Handing over a few loose coins, he studied her for another second before turning away. If she was a reporter, he was going to have some angry words with Mycroft, who had promised repeatedly that he was in charge of the press and that there was no danger of their interfering.

“Oi!”

Sherlock jumped in spite of himself, and turned around. The woman was hurrying forward, and there was no mistaking that she was addressing him. “Wait up,” she barked, and strode up to him, completely disregarding the few spectators who had halted their walks to stare. “I need to talk to you.”

“I doubt that.”

“Hey, don’t you walk away from me! Or do you want me to broadcast to all of downtown London that the tragically deceased consulting detective is alive and well?”

She had caught up to him, and her words were spoken in a hiss that no one else could have heard, but Sherlock still clenched his fists. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I, mystery boy?” she snapped, but Sherlock noticed that she kept her voice low. “I’ve got your picture, it’s not like you’re hard to recognize; it’s that no one’s really looking.”

“Really? And if I was said detective, how did you have the skill to find me when the masses have had no luck?”

She shrugged. “Got lucky- for the first time in months, it feels like. I was at this café while looking up something else and happened to spot you. Took me a while to believe it, but I came back to make sure, and there you were.”

Sherlock held back a snarl with difficulty. He should have known that coming back to his apartment at this consistent of an early hour was a bad idea, but it was hardly his fault if members of the homeless network had been disappearing mysteriously the past eight nights. If he wanted to learn anything meaningful, he had to go to their haunts, and that meant long treks and early hours. 

He kept his attention on the woman before him. “You got lucky. Let me tell you this…” He cast his mind back to the cup that had been on her café table, noted the absence of a ring on her finger. “Miss Noble, you are very sadly mistaken and I wish you the best of luck in finding a dead man. Good morning.”

He turned away, but was unsurprised when she caught up to him in a few strides. “I have found him, thanks,” she said. “And look, if you keep ignoring me, I absolutely will follow up on my threat to shout out that you’re alive. Just answer me one thing, and I won’t: how did you survive?”

“Go away, please- my time is valuable and you are squandering it.”

“Am I? Funny you say that when you’ve been pretty much wasting all your friends’ time and making them feel bad? That poor- what’s his name- John. Your partner or friend or whatever. You think he’s handling this well? Tell me, what are you?”

He had been about to brush her off once and for all, and then call Mycroft to have her taken care via bribery or arrest, whichever was more convenient, but her last question surprised him. “Are you asking rhetorically?”

“No, you idiot! You jumped off a building and got your head smashed in! So yes, I’m going to ask: what are you? Because you definitely aren’t human.”

That made him roll his eyes. “So you’re a conspiracy theorist. Unusual, I didn’t realize they came out in broad daylight.” 

She looked ready to punch him, and Sherlock took the opportunity to duck into the front door of his apartment building. He was about to call his brother, but remembered barely in time that in the interests of a low profile, he would have to get her out of the street so there would be fewer witnesses to her eventual arrest. 

Accordingly he went back to the door and opened it very slightly. “Very well,” he said, though there was really nothing to which he was acquiescing. 

She gave him a very wary look. “Oh, just like that? I don’t think so.”

He glared at her. “Either interrogate me or leave.”

She glanced up and down the street before entering, and followed him to his apartment in complete silence. Sherlock glanced back at her once or twice, and was surprised to see that she looked unsure of herself, almost worried. It was a sharp contrast to her blustering demeanor in the street. So she was insecure then, put up a front of shouting and ferocity to keep herself from breaking down, or letting others break her. To safeguard herself from vulnerabilities, she was constantly on the attack.

Such a person was not the type he would have imagined to turn to conspiracy theories. If anything, she would be loudly and crudely skeptical of such things. Yet she had just demanded to know his species, as if he could be anything other than human. 

They reached the apartment. Sherlock let her in before him so he could keep an eye on her movements, and was unsurprised to see that she reached for her handbag as soon as she was a good distance away. “Please keep the pepper spray in the purse,” he said drily. “The cylindrical shape of the can is a dead giveaway. Anyway, you don’t need it here.”

“Don’t I?” she snarled. There was a faint spark in her eye that made him halt in his tracks- an effort to show that he meant her no harm. She was jumpier than he had first thought. 

“You seem to think I’m not human, so why would you think pepper spray would do you any good against me?”

“I’m not sure about that, mate,” she snapped. “But I do have my doubts. If you’re human, how the hell did you survive that fall?”

He rolled his eyes. “There are such things as orchestrated events, Miss Noble. Ways of setting a scene and arranging things so that what is seen is not what actually occurred. Magicians use such tricks all the time, you know.”

She stared at him. “So,” she said slowly, drawing out the world. “You’re telling me you faked that whole thing. It was staged." She lowered her handbag slowly, staring at him. “You faked the whole bloody thing. You’re an asshole, you know that? Your poor friend, you just left him there like that? Do you have any idea what the poor man’s had to deal with from newspapers, especially after that body on the roof was found? He was grilled the whole time about his acquaintance with you and whether or not you’d shown signs of violence and whether or not there was ever evidence of you being acquainted with terrorist groups- and he’s stuck by you, you know that? And you just left him!”

That was hardly what Sherlock had been expecting, and his fingers halted in the middle of dialing Mycroft’s number. “It was necessary,” he said coldly. 

The woman stared. “Necessary. To put your friend through all that. He doesn’t even know you’re alive.” 

“Did you come here to lecture me or ask about my species?”

She stared at him for a moment before swallowing and retrieving her bag from where she’d dropped it during her rant. “Neither, actually, though the latter question was on my mind.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, and she went on: “I want you to find someone for me. He’s called the Doctor. And he stops by only when strange- bad- things are happening. I need to find him.”

He stared at her. In the few solid information tips he had been able to gather from his beleaguered homeless network, the title “Doctor” had cropped up in all the cases. Almost every unfortunate who had vanished had had a reputation for knowing of someone by that title, or claiming to have seen the mysterious person. 

This woman’s timing was uncanny. And suspicious. His hand twitched on the phone. 

“Look, I know I sound insane,” she said abruptly. “But this guy is documented- bits and pieces, but he’s there. Do you remember all that nonsense with that alien ship and the prime minister back at Christmas?”

“I highly doubt it was an alien ship,” Sherlock said coolly. “England has been fiddling for years with bizarre technologies it doesn’t understand. The events of that Christmas were very likely the result of an army mistake or blunder that it won’t admit.”

She rolled her eyes, looked ready to say something sarcastic, and then stopped. “Okay, look. I thought the same thing- that it was all a conspiracy or something stupid with the government. I did. But things have happened since then- and- well, I don’t think that’s true anymore.”

There was no longer any bluster about her. She was almost quiet, her eyes downcast and her arms folded. Something about her was shaken, and perhaps that was what again stopped his fingers on the phone. A year or two ago, he would have said he was immune to such weakness on the part of others. But once or twice too often he had seen such vulnerability among those he would prefer to stay safe. 

“Who is this Doctor?”

“That’s the problem,” she said, her eyes still downcast. “I don’t know. He’s not like any doctor you’ve ever met. But he fixes things, and tries to fix people, as best he can. It’s hard to explain but I think he could be around- and I want to find him. Because he offered me something a while back- I need to find out if he’s still willing to make that offer.”

Sherlock felt a sting of disappointment astonishing in its potency. “Miss Noble, if this is about romance-”

“Who the hell said anything about romance? It- it wasn’t that kind of offer! It was a lot better.”

Every piece of knowledge Sherlock had on human behavior told him that she was sincere- and that she was telling the truth. He had a very difficult time wrapping his mind around that. But now that he thought about it, the past few Christmases had been rather odd. True at one of them he had been rather preoccupied with royal scandals and intrigue, but two military mistakes at the same time on both years was rather suspicious. 

His mind raced back to the memory of those days. On one Christmas a significant percentage of people had fallen into comas or been taken faint, and there had been disturbed skies over London for some time. Interestingly, the prime minister, one of the most beloved in recent memory, had taken a rather spectacular fall from grace immediately afterwards. Mycroft had refused at the time to explain why. 

The last Christmas had been rumors of a ship swooping down from the skies over Buckingham palace. But that had only made an appearance of any impact in the tabloids, and he had always avoided those. There was little enough space in his head for relevant information; gossip had no place there. For the first time he began to wonder if he had been too quick to take certain resources for granted. 

The woman was watching him, the tense set of her shoulders betraying how anxious she was. Sherlock regarded her for a moment. He thought about the whisperings in the homeless network and the disappearing bodies of the past few days, and made up his mind. “Let me make a phone call.” He finished dialing and lifted the phone.

“Mycroft, I have a question. It has to do with aliens.”

The silence on the other end of the line lasted too long to be that of shock. A fraction too long. Mycroft Holmes was better at hiding bewilderment and guilt than most men, from most men.  
Sherlock Holmes was not most men.

In the interval, Mycroft had already begun to launch a lecture on wasting his valuable time, but it was half-hearted. Clearly he knew he had already given himself away, and his younger brother wasted no time in exploiting that. “Listen to me, Mycroft. I’ve been making some inquiries and heard some things that have me wondering. You’re a terrible liar, you always breathe quicker and clear your throat in the middle of sentences.” He glanced over at the woman and moved away before lowering his voice. “If you’re covering up aliens, then you probably should know that civilians are picking up hints.”

There was a faint rustle on the other end of the line, presumably as Mycroft sat up straighter. “If you mean the tabloids…”

“No, I mean people are starting to consider it as a serious possibility.” Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock saw the woman stare at him. So she considered herself alone. Interesting. Her reaction when he told her about the rumors spreading in the homeless network would be worth noting. 

Mycroft was silent for several seconds before he gave a quiet sigh. “There is no confirmation or record of any extra-terrestrial life coming to this place at the moment, and we certainly have no further information on the subject. I suggest you make your way to conspiracy theory websites, dear brother; there are a plethora of them.”

“And you started most of them,” Sherlock snapped. But his brother’s word choice had been enough to tell him that Mycroft was not at liberty to talk about the problem at that point and time. There would be a call or angry visit, but the time his brother would take in getting back to him could vary from an hour to a week. 

He hung up and turned his attention back to the woman. “So tell me again, who are you?”

“I never told you the first time,” she said tartly. “But you saw the name on my cup. And don’t think I didn’t miss that you assumed I was single.” 

“I assumed you are single because there is no wedding or engagement band on your finger.”

“Oh. Well anyway, I’m Donna, Donna Noble.”

Sherlock went back to the chair and sat down. “All right then, Miss Noble. You wanted to talk about this Doctor.”

“Yes. Weird things are happening again, and I want to find him. And I want you to help me.”

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like this was mostly filler, but I didn't want to drop Donna in on Sherlock without him putting up a certain resistance to the notion of letting her in. And even then I think this is contrived as hell, but I'm hoping to explain things a bit more in the next few chapters. Anyway this was born of a conversation on tumblr about Doctor Who/Sherlock crossovers and how there should be more Who companions. My brain ran away with how much fun throwing Sherlock and Donna together could be, and the rest is history. This is going to be updated rather sporadically since I have another WIP to update over at ff.net, but I'm really liking where this is heading. I'm guessing it'll be around four or five chapters long, but I don't really know for sure.  
> Bear with me and hopefully I'll see you next time!


End file.
